[40] This case and several others similarly illustrative of the disease-creating power of emotional disturbances are discussed by Doctor Donley in "Psychotherapeutics," a book of composite authorship. Bizarre as these cases must seem, they are actually typical of a widespread malady that causes an amount of suffering only appreciable by the sufferers themselves. In every land there are thousands of men and women afflicted with obsessions equally strange and equally distressing, yet amenable to treatment by the methods of psychopathology. Often, in order to effect a cure, it is not necessary to make use of the roundabout device just described. Direct suggestion--a strongly negative command imposed in the hypnotic state--is frequently sufficient. Often, besides, it is not necessary to use hypnotism at all, a cure resulting if only the psychopathologist can dig down to the root of the trouble, and, by recalling to conscious recollection the lost memory image, reassociate it with the rest of the contents of the upper consciousness. Particularly interesting in this connection, as being illustrative also of an ingenious method of "mind tunnelling" nowadays frequently employed to get at forgotten memories, is a case reported by Doctor A. A. Brill, a New York psychopathologist. His patient was a young woman who applied to be treated for extreme nervousness. She had been perfectly well until three months before, when, she said, she had begun to suffer from a complication of disorders, including insomnia, loss of appetite, constant headache, irritability, and stomach trouble. No physical cause for her condition could be detected, and Doctor Brill suspected that it was due to some secret anxiety, but the patient earnestly assured him that she "had nothing on her mind." To get at the facts which he suspected she was consciously or unconsciously concealing from him, Doctor Brill decided to make use of what is known as the "association-reaction method of mental diagnosis," a cumbersome and formidable term for a really simple process.